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How To Be More Productive In 2020: These Apps Are Already Helping

U.S. employees spend an average 9.6 hours a day working, but 3.8 of those hours are taken up with “busywork,” or tasks of little value. That’s according to the findings of a new survey of more than 880 U.S. knowledge workers by Zapier.

As such, many are resolving to be more efficient next year: almost a third (30%) say being more productive at work is one of their 2020 career resolutions.

U.S. knowledge workers spend 3.8 hours of their working day on tasks of little value, according to a ... [+] new survey

Pixabay

In a bid to boost the hours spent doing meaningful work, many are turning to apps to help them reach a flow state, deal with the never ending onslaught of emails, or slash travel time. Here are five apps that come recommended by busy people looking to achieve more in less time.

Noise control

As an SEO content specialist for Looka, an AI-powered logo maker, most of Christine Glossop’s job is spent writing. She uses the Noisli app to create the right sonic conditions to block out distractions and stave off writer’s block. The apps lets her select and blend ambient sounds from white noise to thunderstorms to the hum of an airplane in flight.

Glossop says: “If I need my environment to sound like a rainy day in a coffee shop, I use the app to recreate that noise. If I feel like a crackling fire and wind would work best, I can create that mix. By artificially creating the right conditions for writing, I'm able to save more than two hours a week that would otherwise be spent trying to get in the writing zone.”

Need your workspace to sound more like a coffee shop, or a train rumbling along tracks? There's an ... [+] app for that.

Simon Abrams on Unsplash

Email angel

Linda Abraham, founder of MBA and graduate admissions consultancy Accepted, has found an app to help her battle through the endless daily tide of emails from her back-office staff, consultants and weekly podcast guests, without letting the most important messages slip through the cracks.

For this, she uses a free Gmail plug-in called Gmelius. Abraham says: “This app saves me hours each week because it enables me to file away emails and be more consistent about following up. I can also defer incoming emails and deal with them later. So, if I'm in a rush, trying to focus on a specific task, or waiting for someone else to respond, I can set a time when I want the email to reappear at the top of my inbox. In the interim, it is filed away.”

Appointment booker

He has automated that process using an app called Book Like A Boss. He says: “Now, people pay for their appointments online, select a time, and fill out a short questionnaire on my website. Then they receive a link to join the call, as well as email and text reminders, and an invoice after our call. This saves me 20 hours per week and it has also led to fewer mistakes. I used to need to remember to send invoices, payments, Zoom links, and questionnaires, and occasionally I would forget. Now the process is automated, there haven't been any more errors.”

Efficient traveler

Lindsay Berg, vice president of marketing at Island, confesses she used to be one of those L.A people who mistakenly believed it took just 20 minutes to get anywhere. Then she discovered an app called Waze. It lets her program her destinations at the beginning of each day and alerts her when she needs to leave–based on live traffic updates–as well as navigating Berg to her destination.

She says: “I can hardly quantify how much time it saves me, but at least three hours a week. Also, when the app tells me a ride is going to take me longer than expected, I can cue up a podcast beforehand and squeeze in some Oprah Super Soul Sunday or NPR How I Built This!”

Slashing travel time by using an app that gives live traffic alerts can free up hours each week for ... [+] meaningful work

Unsplash

Streamlined tech

Life strategist and consultant Nile Harris, CEO of Harris Ventures Group, who says she has been on the lookout for productivity-boosting tools for the past 20+ years, says she “cannot live” without an app called Shift.

She explains: “I was having to log in and out of different email, social media, and cloud accounts so I started hunting for a solution that would let me access multiple email, Twitter and Instagram accounts. I found Shift which lets me connect numerous accounts inside of the desktop app and effortlessly switch between accounts at the click of a button. It integrates with dozens of other productivity platforms that remain logged in and are easy to organize along the sidebar.”

She describes it as a “powerful tool that is reasonably priced” and adds: “While I find it a tad buggy, the developers are working to stabilize the program and release updates often.”

Having lived for years in the cruel grip of burnout, I cured myself by researching how to achieve more in less time, testing productivity hacks, and looking at the

…

Having lived for years in the cruel grip of burnout, I cured myself by researching how to achieve more in less time, testing productivity hacks, and looking at the psychology behind efficiency. What it taught me is that hard work does not yield greater success. This widely-accepted notion is costing entrepreneurs, and the economy, dearly. Once I’d had this epiphany, I turned my business, virtual assistant site Time Etc, from a failure into a global success story (it’s now on track to hit $10million in revenue), improved the lives of thousands of entrepreneurs by saving them almost 500,000 hours, and found the time to write my first book, The Hard Work Myth.